During Thursday’s Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) questioned DHS Secretary. Kristi Noem about Congressional oversight communication.
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00:00At least have a commitment, Madam Chair, that senators on this committee will be allowed to submit questions for the record and that you will ask the secretary to answer those questions?
00:10Absolutely. Yes. Senator Peters.
00:13Thank you, Madam Chair. Secretary Ohm, good to see you again.
00:18Secretary, I certainly appreciated your commitment during your confirmation hearing before my committee on fully staffing the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Canada.
00:29As you know, one of the busiest border crossings in all of North America.
00:32It's scheduled to open this fall. It's going to be a big deal.
00:36But my question for you is how are preparations going for the opening of that bridge?
00:41Obviously, your department will play a big role in that opening.
00:45Yes, we're excited about it. We're thankful that the construction has been completed and that it's working well.
00:51And we're excited to coming up there and having the celebration with you.
00:55Do you have the resources and personnel in place now?
00:58Yes, we do.
00:59Good. I also appreciated your commitment to fully building out the Northern Border Mission Center,
01:05which will be located at Selfridge Air National Guard Base to coordinate all that goes on along the northern border.
01:12How is the build-out of that center progressing, please?
01:16It's going well. It's on track.
01:19I haven't heard of anything that has been delayed.
01:22And I can get you a more detailed update, though, if you would like one.
01:25I would. If we could follow up after this hearing, I would appreciate that.
01:31As a ranking member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee,
01:34I have sent you nine letters since you have been sworn in as Secretary of Homeland Security.
01:39So far, I've received only two replies, and quite frankly, one of those was completely unsatisfactory.
01:46And while I understand you've had a busy start, you have a lot on your plate, including travel,
01:51responses to congressional oversight requests are a priority.
01:55And I think you hold that view, but we're not seeing it being demonstrated, unfortunately.
02:00So my question for you is, when can I expect responses to these letters?
02:05And can you commit to getting me responses, certainly, before our budget hearing, before his guy coming up?
02:11Yes, absolutely.
02:12Sir, I was unaware that you had that many letters out yet.
02:17I know some of the letters you requested had a lot of data to gather and information.
02:22And so that may be a delay on a couple of them, but we will get those gathered and get them to you.
02:28As you know, when I came into this role, we had a backlog of letters from senators and congressmen up to four years,
02:36where the previous administration did not respond to any of you.
02:38That was a universal complaint I had from Republicans and Democrats.
02:41Well, we want to see that change.
02:43So if we could get these letters back as quickly as possible, I'd appreciate that.
02:47I bet.
02:47As you know, Madam Secretary, Congress spent years creating CISA, clarifying its mission and ensuring that the agency can employ the most skilled federal employees
02:57to protect our federal cyber networks and critical infrastructure from attacks.
03:03During your confirmation process, you stated that you wanted to get CISA back on mission.
03:09But, quite frankly, you were very light on specifics of what that actually meant.
03:14Now that you've been in your position for several months, could you explain to us in detail what getting CISA back on its mission means?
03:24And, I mean, with some specificity, which offices and programs at CISA do you consider to be off mission?
03:29And which ones do you consider to be on mission?
03:33Well, as you know, CISA, under the last administration, got involved in being somewhat of the role of the Ministry of Truth.
03:41They were defining what was misinformation, disinformation.
03:45They were out doing election security missions that were censorship and deciding what was truth and what wasn't truth,
03:53and we have eliminated those functions within CISA.
03:56CISA was created to be an entity that supported small and medium businesses and also critical infrastructure,
04:05our electrical grid, our water systems, that are vulnerable to hacking attempts and influence from foreign countries
04:11but enemies of the United States of America.
04:13So we are building out to those-
04:15I agree with all this.
04:16I just have limited time here.
04:17Yeah.
04:18I agree with all that, and that is the central focus that it has to continue.
04:21But I want to clarify, because you talked about misinformation.
04:24I've heard this a lot.
04:25Certainly, I don't want to have any agency putting out misinformation.
04:29But CISA had 15 full-time employees assigned to countering misinformation mission.
04:36That's 15 employees out of 3,000 employees that work at CISA.
04:40And in my understanding, and I think you mentioned it, those 15 people are not doing that anymore.
04:45So is CISA still not on mission?
04:48Is it still-
04:49It's getting there.
04:49We don't have our Senate-confirmed leader of CISA yet.
04:53We're looking forward to that and the president's cybersecurity-
04:55But that doesn't have to do with mission.
04:56I mean, why is it not forming a mission?
04:59Because my frustration is-
05:01Why is what not-
05:02Why do you say it's off mission if the unit that was doing that is gone?
05:06Yeah, it's back on mission, but we still have silos to break down between our intelligence agencies.
05:12We still have communication systems that have to be built so we can share information.
05:17I shared during my confirmation hearing that one of the most alarming things to me that happened to learn
05:22was that when Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon happened, that we knew we'd been hacked.
05:27We knew who we'd been hacked by, but we had no idea how to stop it.
05:30And so building those relationships with the private sector to help us go out there and really get the information
05:37that we need to get the technology and expertise to get in front of those bad actors that would infiltrate our systems
05:44I think is incredibly important.
05:46So making sure that we have those partnerships to get them with us sharing information
05:51and advice and wisdom on how to stop these hackers before they steal our critical information
05:56is very, very important.
05:58You know better than anybody, better than I do even, that we have 10 of the 16 critical infrastructure components
06:05under the Department of Homeland Security.
06:07So this is a top priority of President Trump.
06:09So it is on mission now.
06:11This is on mission.
06:12It is.
06:13Great. Thank you.
06:13Thank you, Senator Peters.
06:14Senator?